But we are always getting the breaks. The day doesn't pass but what all of us get a break of one kind or another, such as walking into the office just at the moment the boss is ready to fire the first man who walks through the door. Or like taking a Florida vacation during the coldest weather in forty years. The breaks come in all shapes and sizes, and in all degrees of good fortune and bad.
Of course the man who gets a promotion through a lucky break is more discussed than the man who lost it, bad break of equal import though he had, just as the man who breaks the bank at Monte Carlo is more discussed than the hundreds of men whom the bank at Monte Carlo broke. In fact, the top executive who got there through the breaks is about as rare as the gambler who breaks the bank. In the long run the good and bad breaks will cancel each other out, and the man who waits for the "right chance" to come along might do better buying lottery tickets.
Breaks don't make the man, but a man with a program who knows where he is going can make his own breaks. Most of my clients will agree to that, but in some a curious type of reverse thinking sets in. The reasoning goes like this: "I'm dissatisfied with my present job, but at-least I know where I stand. To move to a bigger job involves risks, many of them unforeseeable and therefore dangerous. And with a wife and three children to support, I can't afford to take a chance."
The man with that defeatist kind of thinking is doomed if he does, and doomed if he doesn't. Jobs are like shoes. When they are too small for one, they pinch. The pain shows up in many ways-in dissatisfaction, frustration, chronic illness, and all-too-often a short temper that can seriously disrupt family life. A good salary or a title on the door is of little help if the job is still too small. The man seeking to ease his frustrations in the bar of an exclusive club is separated only by his surroundings from the malcontent seeking to drown his problems in a cheap dive. Both are failures, and the difference is only one of degree. One fails more luxuriously than the other, but the therapeutic value of the luxury is dubious, to say the least.
It is true, that you are not gambling with your future if you elect to remain in a job too small for you. It is a sure thing that you are going to lose. But let's eliminate. Gambling, an unpleasant word unless one can afford to lose, and especially unpleasant when a career is at stake. When you know your Dynamic Success Factors and know how they apply to your next step upward, you won't be stepping up in the dark on that neck-snapping step that isn't there. You'll know where you are going, full speed ahead, and let the breaks fall where they may.
Those Distant Goals Can Strain Your Eyes
Back in 1943 a bomber pilot trained in sunny California got his plane and crew as far as Iceland where the weather is more variable at hundred-yard intervals. The next morning he managed to taxi his plane through a blizzard, but when he got to the runway for his takeoff to England, he had to call the control tower with the information that he couldn't see half way down the runway.
"That's all right, you're cleared for take-off", assured the voice from the tower. "When you get half-way down the runway, you'll see the other half."
The long-range plan is like that. The pilot of the plane had to have England as his long-range destination, but he could have been stopped far short of there if he hadn't been able to look at it a few hundred yards at a time.
The more you concentrate your gaze on a distant goal, the more apt you are to stumble over something right under your feet. The career diplomat who favors a top post in South America is on the right track, but first he should set his eye on learning Spanish and Portuguese, and history, and economics, and politics, plus a plain ability to get along with people before that distant goal comes into focus. Remember what I said about planting seed successes? Use the distant goal as a reference point, but pour plenty of salt over the old adage, "Hitch your wagon to a star, keep your seat, and there you are." The achievable goal you set out to reach within the next 24 hours is the one that gets you there. Unless the immediate goal is reached, with more attainable tomorrow and the next day, the distant goal remains just that- distant. A strain on the eyes and the hopes.
In Summation
- It is a mistake to believe your supervisor knows what you are doing, unless you are doing it wrong. Then he'll know soon enough, but superior performance quickly becomes expected performance-"I don't have to worry about that man." To reverse an old saying, "Out of mind, out of sight."
- It is an error to keep your work and your life in completely separate compartments. You have a life of your own, but colleagues can be friends.
- Dress the part. The "package" makes the first impression and it should be a favorable one.
- It is almost tragic to overlook the constructive side of office politics. If you don't know what's going on around you, no one is going to know you are around.
- It is a mistake to believe that the time given to an analysis of your mistakes and weaknesses is not time robbed from the development of your strengths and best talents. Talent is what you have to sell. Mistakes, no matter how thoroughly analyzed and presented, have small market value.
- It is a mistake to believe you can get ahead without keeping records of your progress. Even the small storekeeper rings up a five cent sale. You, with a career at stake, cannot leave your future to guesswork anymore than the storekeeper can leave his charge accounts unrecorded and hope everyone will pay in full later. And until you keep a record of your achievements, you won't know whether you've collected on them or not.
- It is a mistake to have long term, reach-for-the-stars ambitions if you don't have some short term, achievable goals in between. Nothing succeeds like success, and the rocket which, at present writing, is observing Venus is not one big blast-off, but the accumulation of many lesser successes that began with the invention of explosives. (Here again, I might point out, the sole interest is in the achievements of the survivors, and not in the mistakes of the thousands who blew themselves-and a considerable number of innocent bystanders-into fragments.) In short, to achieve the long range success, short term successes must be provided to develop the habit that makes the big one inevitable.
